Catharina Hooft con la sua balia

This is the only child's portrait Frans Hals is known to have painted. The baby is Catharina Hooft, born in 1618 into a wealthy Amsterdam family, shown here around the age of two in a stiff brocade dress edged with costly lace. She is not with her mother but with her wet-nurse, who leans in holding out an apple, as if both had just turned toward someone entering the room. Hals catches that half-second of attention, the nurse's warm glance and the child's bright, alert face. The little girl would grow up fast by our measure. At 17 she married Cornelis de Graeff, who became one of the most powerful men in the government of Amsterdam.